When you format a hard drive or delete a partition, you usually only delete the file system, which makes the data invisible or no longer actively indexed, but not gone. A file recovery program or special hardware can often recover the information. If you want to make sure that your private information is gone for good, you should wipe the hard drive with special software.

This process can take from several minutes to several hours depending on the size of the disk and the method you choose.

Back up anything you want to keep, such as photos, software product keys, etc. Once the hard drive wipe is complete, there is absolutely no way to recover data from the drive.

Download a free data destruction program. Any of the first six programs we recommend on that list will work fine because they can be used to wipe a hard drive from outside of Windows, a necessary function if you want to wipe the drive that Windows is installed on.